32. Jolene

Ifound out why this room was even more luxurious than the last. It's because it's a birthing room attached to a parent room, which Damon reserved because we knew in advance that the babies would he staying here for a couple weeks to months.

Now, all I would say about this is that there's a vast difference between rich and wealthy. I couldn't have afforded something like this before and I've always had the best. Damon had gone all out which I appreciated and the preferential treatment should be embarrassing, but I can't lie, I loved that shit.

The room looked like a florist shop. His ex-teammates along with the team owners and other personnel sent huge luxurious bouquets and more gifts than the ones that were already at the house from the shower.

The others were constantly running back and forth to take things back to the house each time they came for a visit. I guess Damon had started his activity chart early, because he had everyone on rotation. The kids were home for the summer so they were added to the roster and because we had the private room, it was easier for more of them to spend time with the babies at once than if they all had to go to the NICU.

The specialist had brought her own team to watch over the babies to be sure that everything went as fine as could be. So far, there were no major issues other than their weight, which had been expected and prepared for.

Now that that's out of the way, there was one aspect of my labor and delivery that was a hot topic and was to be avoided at all costs unless Damon was out of the room, which only happened when he was in the bathroom. Our daughter.

Now, maybe it's because he didn't prepare for the possibility of a daughter, or maybe it's because he knows nothing about little girls and have never been exposed to any. Or, maybe it's because he took advice from my dad, and Dalton.

For some reason, he has had my child already live a whole-ass lifetime even before she left the NICU. Here is a partial list of all the things his daughter is ‘not' allowed to do. No ear piercings until she is older. No sleepovers no fucking where ever.

No beauty anything until she's eighteen, no male friends until she's twenty-one. Oh and he"s going to sit in her kindergarten class for the first year. I know you think I'm kidding, but these are the conversations we have until I fall asleep at night, praying for peace. These first-time parents are a pain in the ass.

He on the other hand, never sleeps. He's either in the room checking on me, or in the NICU annoying the staff. He wants to be part of every weigh-in, every mealtime and bath time, while I'm not allowed to do anything but eat, sleep and get poked at by doctors to make sure that everything is fine.

Now, this is when I knew he had lost his mind. He called a breeder somewhere in the Midwest to order a pony. According to him, these things take time and by the time she's ready to ride it'll be ready.

"You didn't order one for the boys."

"I already took care of their stuff because I knew they were coming, she's a surprise so I have to make sure I don't forget anything." He's obsessed with forgetting things and making her feel slighted.

I try to explain that she's too young to care and won't know either way, but apparently he's been listening to my kids bicker with each other and I'd be amazed at what kids remember and hold onto. No amount of telling him that they're just ragging on each other won't suffice. He just knows he"s going to screw up and his daughter is going to get the shitty end of the stick.

To hear him tell it, I'm going to be a boy mom, something Savanna had to explain to me, and his precious little darling is going to get shafted. I have no idea what the hell happened to him or what he's been reading but he's nuts.

Since she was the biggest she was the first one taken off of the feeding tube and the first one I was able to safely hold and nurse. That's when I got to nurser her. Her Daddy hovered over me like a bad penny every time that child opened her eyes and I just knew she was going to be spoiled.

He walks around the room having these long-drawn-out conversations with her because as he told me late last night, he feels guilty because he only talked to her brothers while they were in the womb and she must feel left out.

I asked the specialist to either get him to calm down or give himself to put me out of my misery, something that would make him sleep until it was time to go home.

That wasn't going to work because he was still ripping into the poor woman each time he saw her because of the surprise baby. When I joked that seven was his lucky number and he should've expected it, he wasn't too amused.

I've been on some kind of plane that I've never visited before. I don't know how to describe it, but maybe it's because I'd done this four times before and this was a different time compared to when I last gave birth, but I didn't feel any of the anxiety I had in the past.

I think the fact that there were so many hands available this time around made all the difference in the world. It also helped that my mother-in-law was not a meddling know it all bitch, but a sweet woman who only wanted to look at her grandbabies with the biggest smile on her face and shop for them online every time her eyes opened.

I left the hiring of their nannies and nurses to Damon, not because I didn't care or was too tired, but because he's worse than the Gestapo. Young, old, sob story, no sob story, he had no chill. He vetted these people like they were applying for top security clearance. It was wild. Some of them had a better education than me.

Sheila was keeping me up to date so I know about the debate over whether or not Dabria, should get her own room. That's our daughter's name. In Hebrew text it's the name of an angel, in some Latin cultures it's the angel of death, I'm not sure which he was going for.

Anyhow, he wasn't too sure about letting her stay in the same room as her brothers until the others assured him it wouldn't matter until they were older. I slept through that one thank heaven. In the end it was decided that there was more than enough room for her crib in the sleeping room.

He"d already ordered her as much clothes as her brothers as well as toys and I heard about the special cleaners he had come in to make sure the place was germ free and ready for them to be brought home. I didn't even know there was such a thing.

So, with all that, there was hardly anything left for me to do. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to switch up and become uninterested or start pawning off everything to me and the others, but it didn't come, not even when we left the hospital almost a month later.

Damon had been back and forth some days, but I never left and someone was always with me during those times so that by the time we went home I was spoiled.

Things were entirely different here than they had been at the hospital because there weren't any feeding machines and an entire hospital staff at our disposal. We'd been offered extra milk if required and Damon almost spazzed out on the people's floor.

You'd think they asked him to hold the babies up to a cow's udder or something the way he carried on. For this reason, I'd been pumping since day one and had a decent supply of milk to go around. Did you know that you need an entirely new and separate freezer to store the baby's milk?

Of course, the four we already had weren't enough. I spent the first few days at home sitting by the filling station, that's what I call the little area he had made for me to sit and pump uninterrupted. I don't think he's getting the full experience because he seems to think this is easy, which of course it is when you have nurses and nannies working with you around the clock, not to mention family and friends that actually fight to help.

From what I've gathered, he's got some kind of competition going with Kevin that's all in his head. But who am I to stop him? Bless the doctor, she told him that I need time to heal as well and I think he thinks that means that I'm only allowed to lift my fork when I eat.

I'm going to feel for him when they start crawling or walking because he keeps bragging to anyone who would listen how easy his little angels are. No child has been as beautiful, as well-behaved, or did this or that sooner. They should have all the pages in the Guinness book of records to hear him tell it.

He"s so cute it's laughable, because he has no idea what's coming.

* * *

DAMON

* * *

I walked aroundwith my little roster ticking off the things that had been done and making sure everything was as it should be before I turn in for the night. All the bottles were in their special little machine being cleaned, the diaper bins had been emptied and there was enough milk in the cooling fridge for tomorrow.

"Oh, I better check the supply." I checked my notes to see who was up first for the tit tomorrow. We're trying to keep it fair and though she prefers to breastfeed that doesn't always work out because these little fuckers could eat.

I'm better at this shit because it helps me relax knowing that everything was in its place and we were way ahead of the game. I have contingency plans in place for any emergency I could imagine, though my wife just laughs and roll over whenever I mention them.

She's a big ole Debbie Downer, so I ignore her mostly, as long as everyone else around here sticks with the program. I know they all laugh at me behind my back, but they'll be lost without my schedules and the little post its I leave around the house to remind everyone what they have to do.

So far I have this place running like a well-oiled machine and I patrol the house every hour on the hour to make sure everything is running as it should. There are cameras and monitors in the nursery so that even a mouse can't get by without me knowing it.

I was at the end of my inspection when my phone rang. "Hello!"

"What do you want us to do about this woman? It's been almost two months, I don't think we can hold her any longer without giving her, that phone call."

"It's fine, let her have her call."

Not that it would do her any good. I'd already put a retainer on the more reputable attorneys in the area so she was going to have a hard time finding one to take her case.

She can't make long distance calls and her phone has been reset to company settings. I happen to know she doesn't remember numbers so they're all in contacts, which are now lost. I had one more issue to deal with there as well, after seeing the pictures of her injuries, but that's something to worry about another time.